Bossypants – Review – ****

I haven’t seen very much of 30 Rock (don’t worry, it’s on my long long list of TV shows to watch, and I know about the Rural Juror and Kenneth the Page, so relax), but I like what I’ve seen of Tina Fey, and I heard great things about the memoir, plus, you know, Chapter’s gift card. And anyway, her description of a character from the only episode of my aborted attempt to watch the 1st season that I remember – Jenna has a short-lived romance with an Austrian prince, pg 192 – makes me want to give the show another try, although it is possible I may find reading about the show funnier than actually watching it.

It was a very pleasurable read, not groundbreaking or anything. I breezed right through it. Fey is very good at scene-setting and description. I would also like to personally think her for “blorft” (pg 173), a very valuable and expressive new word.

My favourite portions of the book were her Windy City and Rules for Improv (which might as well be rules for life), and “A Childhood Dream Realized.” Essentially, I love reading about her improvising experiences. It’s so divorced from the world I know – the one filled with hermit hibernation and taking 3 years to complete a 1 year CBR because every review might not be a perfect masterpiece of criticism and entertainment, changing the literary landscape as we know it (in case it wasn’t obvious, I have totally let go of this goal) – this idea of seeing what pops out of our mouths without worrying about how it will come across. What an alien and foreign concept.

I loved her take on women’s comedy (“I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist” – remember that you are not the arbiter of good taste), mothering (“me time”!), and anything that praised Amy Poehler. In fact, her chapter on juggling work and motherhood chapter was, literally, “refreshingly” honest, incredibly personal, and deeply relatable; I seriously, felt cleansed after reading it.

And, guess who else doesn’t have a driver’s license! HA!

[Note: When I finished Bossypants, I looked at the disaster table that currently holds Stuff I’m In The Middle Of, and saw Caitlin Moran’s book “How to be a Woman,” and thought, “I can’t read that yet, I’m not ready to be inspired into doing something that reading two memoirs about awesome women in a row might spur me to do.” It is now several months later, I have just finished “How to be a Woman,” and I am feeling merely semi-inspired. I wasn’t a TV presenter at 18, dammit!]